


Breathe

by Mymlen



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Angst, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 20:44:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17393408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mymlen/pseuds/Mymlen
Summary: Shinji exhales and sinks slowly to the bottom of the pool. The pressure on his eardrums grows as he nears the tiles at the bottom. He puts a hand over his mouth and pinches his nose closed. He’s running out of air. There is a strong urge to breathe in. He has spent so much time drowned in LCL that breathing in liquid isn’t even that foreign anymore. It would be so easy to simply do the same thing here, just gulp a mouthful of water into his lungs. It’s stupid. It ought to be harder, take longer than just a couple of months of piloting EVA, to break such a basic survival mechanism. He could drown here, easily.A one-shot of the pilots catching a short break from their shitty lives.





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> _I just wanted to write something where these messed up kids got to do something nice for once in their lives with no creepy NERV people around to fuck with their heads, but I guess it turned out fairly angsty anyway, because that’s the effect Shinji has on a storyline._
> 
> _(Also, in this story Kaworu has arrived before Asuka went catatonic. I can’t keep track of the different canonical timelines anymore, anyway; maybe that does happen in one of them.)_

He kicks off from the end of the pool for another lap – kick, push, breathe, kick. His muscles are starting to ache. He lost count of his laps a while back and is now just mechanically continuing without any tangible goal in mind. He could swim laps to infinity, purposelessly repeating these movements forever.

It’s a nice thought. He could just keep doing this until someone told him to stop.

Kick, push, breathe, kick.

It’s a crushing thought. He could just keep doing this forever until someone told him to stop.

He stops.

His body drops vertical in the water. It’s not even like it’s less tiring than swimming. He has to keep treading water, kicking his legs and moving his arms in slow circles to keep his head above the surface. He looks down the length of the pool towards the distant edge he was heading towards. His arms and legs are tired.

Shinji takes a deep breath, relaxes into the gentle lift of the water and then exhales, sinking below the surface as he empties his lungs of air.

He sinks slowly to the bottom. The pressure on his eardrums grows as he nears the tiles at the bottom.

It isn’t quiet down there, but sound is deeper, more distant. He curls into a loose sitting position, limbs gently held afloat by the water. He can hear the rush of water in the filtering system and, far away, the mechanical pounding of the NERV headquarters.

Rei’s slender figure cuts through the water. It’s weird to see her swimming from below, but it looks just as graceful as when he watched her from the poolside before getting in himself. She moves with fluid ease from one end of the pool to the other, her effortless speed making it seem as if she is being pulled by an invisible wire.

Shinji puts a hand over his mouth and pinches his nose closed. He’s running out of air. There is a strong urge to breathe in. He has spent so much time drowned in LCL that breathing in liquid isn’t even that foreign anymore. It would be so easy to simply do the same thing here, just gulp a mouthful of water into his lungs. It’s stupid. It ought to be harder, take longer than just a couple of months of piloting EVA, to break such a basic survival mechanism. He could drown here, easily.

The surface breaks at the far end of the pool, bubbles rising up around the pair of pale feet plunging into the water, disembodied in Shinji’s blue world.

Shinji unfurls, kicked off from the bottom, realizing only when he moves that his muscles were screaming for air, his lungs are suddenly burning. He breathes in a second too early, a sharp mix of air and chlorinated water getting into his throat, and it definitely isn’t like breathing LCL. He resurfaces coughing and sputtering, treading water and trying to gasp down air while his coughs reverberate off the tiled walls. Through his watering eyes, he can see Kaworu at the edge of the pool. Shinji breathes in deep, his throat burns. He wipes his nose and glances towards Rei, then swims with slow strokes back towards the edge he came from. Kaworu is watching him with a thin smile ghosting his lips. He isn’t wearing a swimsuit; he is in shorts and a black t-shirt with the NERV logo printed on it.

Shinji reaches up to grab the edge next to him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

Shinji pulls his goggles off and rubs the sore circle around one eye with the heel of his hand.

“Are you going swimming?” he asks.

A stupid question, obviously, when Kaworu isn’t wearing a swimsuit, but Kaworu looks out over the pool for a moment like he is actually considering it.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

“What are you doing down here?”

Kaworu cocks his head.

“I was bored. Why are you down here?”

“I’m swimming.”

“Why?”

Shinji shrugs, an awkward, curled movement, since he still has his hands on the edge.

“Do you like swimming?” Kaworu asks, with a weird little smile on his face, and he says it in that way he does when he asks Shinji weird questions about trivial things no one else would ever care to ask him about.

“It’s fine.”

“Doesn’t sound like you like it.”

Shinji shrugs again.

“I don’t dislike it.”

“Why are you doing it if you don’t like it?”

And it doesn’t even sound like an accusation. He makes it sound like he is just interested. As if he actually wants to know why Shinji is swimming; like he is fascinated to know why Shinji does anything. It’s weird. Shinji isn’t stupid, he knows Kaworu is weird. He never knows what to do around him, he always feels like an idiot talking to him, and then becomes annoyed, because it isn’t his fault he doesn’t know what to do with himself if Kaworu doesn’t act like a normal person. But then, it is also, weirdly, kind of nice. Kaworu asks him stupid things and Shinji finds himself wanting to give him some sort of interesting answer. Not that he ever does. He can’t come up with anything. He isn’t interesting and he doesn’t think about why he does things; he just does them.

“They want us to keep in shape,” he says, like the dull, boring person he is.

It’s true, but he doesn’t like how it sounds.

“What about Rei?” Kaworu asks, nodding towards her side of the pool.

Shinji turns to watch her. She does a graceful underwater turn at the opposite end of the pool, finishing another lap and swimming back towards them. She’s a good swimmer, cutting through the water like a streamlined, silver fish.

“I don’t know,” Shinji says. “She’s down here a lot. I guess she’s just focused. She wants to be a good pilot.”

“You don’t need to be in good shape to pilot EVA,” Kaworu says. “You know that, right? EVA already has all the power, you just need to be its mind.”

“I suppose.”

“Who told you to go swimming?”

Shinji winces at the assumption behind those words – that Kaworu just knows, just assumed, that someone has told him to.

“Katsuragi,” he mutters.

“Do you know why?”

“Because I was just lying in my room listening to music all the time and she said I was withering away.”

“Then you aren’t swimming to stay in shape, you’re swimming because Katsuragi doesn’t want you to be sad and moping around her apartment.”

“I try not to get in the way,” Shinji mutters, voice small.

Kaworu pulls his feet out of the water and stands up in one fluid movement.

“Come on,” he says. “You’re done swimming.”

Shinji follows Kaworu down the side of the pool. It’s cold out of the water, the moisture pulling heat from his skin as it dries. The tiles are slippery under his feet. Kaworu pulls open the door to the locker room. Shinji glances over his shoulder back at Rei, who is still swimming and hasn’t noticed them leaving. Maybe she didn’t even notice they were there in the first place.

“Come on,” Kaworu says, and Shinji follows him inside.

 

There are clean towels folded on the benches in the locker room. Shinji grabs one and wraps it around his shoulders. He doesn’t know who puts the towels there; he has never seen anyone but the pilots down here. It’s a big room though, rows of lockers down the walls and long, wooden benches between them. Ten separate shower stalls. It all feels like it was supposed to be used by lots of people, but he doesn’t know if anyone but the four of them even has access to the pool.

Their plug suits are down here too. Shinji has left his clothes on the bench by his usual locker without even thinking about it. He only really only comes here before piloting EVA.

Kaworu heads for Shinji’s pile of clothes. He grabs his shirt and tosses it at him.

“Get dressed,” he says.

Shinji catches it, almost dropping his towel.

“Why? Where are we going?”

Kaworu shrugs.

“Out? We should do something you want to do.”

Shinji’s stomach tightens.

“Like what?” he says.

Kaworu shrugs and smiles, head to the side, watching Shinji curiously, and for a second, Shinji hates him. He hates him so much.

It’s like talking to Misato. She wants him to relax, to have fun, do what he likes, but of course only until the next angel arrives. Then, they’ll need him to pilot again. She probably means well, but he hates that she can’t just let him be. He doesn’t know why he’s supposed to do anything. All they want him to do is pilot, and he is doing that now, so why would they pretend to care what he does the rest of the time?

He is so tired all the time. Really, he just wants to sleep.

“I don’t want to do anything,” Shinji says.

He never tells Misato that, he knows she wouldn’t listen. He isn’t sure Kaworu will either, but at least he probably won’t be disappointed to hear it. It’s so strange how he seems to know exactly how weak and boring and useless Shinji is and still for some reason acts like he likes him.

“I think maybe I should just go swim some more.”

He is looking at the floor, not at Kaworu. At the white tiles, his bare feet. His hand still holding the towel like a shawl around his shoulders. He doesn’t notice Kaworu moving until he is right in front of him; he starts at the weight of the hand on his shoulder.

“Shinji,” Kaworu says, his voice different from before, softer now, quieter. “Just because you hate piloting doesn’t mean you have to be miserable all the time.”

“I’m not miserable.”

He feels Kaworu’s hand sliding up his shoulder, the cold touch of his fingers on his neck and his breath catches in his throat. He closes his eyes.

“Okay,” Kaworu says. “Let’s not go anywhere. We can stay here.”

Kaworu brushes a hand over his cheek, so careful it feels like he’s afraid to touch him.

“I’m just like you,” he says, so quietly Shinji can hardly make out the words.

He is close enough that Shinji can feel his breath on his face, a warm brush of air against his skin.

“There is something I have to do too. A mission. It’s something I have to carry and there is nothing I can do to stop it or get rid of that burden. But I also have free will. So do you. I can’t run from what I have to do, just like you can’t give up piloting EVA, but I get to choose some things. Only the small things, but that’s okay. I chose to talk to you, to try to make you my friend. We can do that. We have that choice.”

“There’s nothing I want to do,” Shinji mumbles, his voice so small it feels like the words are crumbling in his mouth.

Kaworu is right there in front of him and he can’t even look at him. He just keeps his eyes closed and feels his heart pounding too fast in his chest. He feels small and grey and dead inside, like his guts are rotting, and he hates himself for being like this. He doesn’t want free will. He doesn’t want to think or make decisions, he doesn’t want to wonder about why he pilots EVA, or what he would do with his life if he didn’t have to. He just wants to sleep. He wants to disappear.

“Don’t you want to be around the people you like?”

He takes another deep breath. The air smells like chlorine.

“I don’t like anyone.”

It’s a lie. It’s a lie, but it’s so close to the truth.

“That’s not true,” Kaworu says, so softly. “You like Rei and Katsuragi, right? And you like Asuka.”

Shinji’s mouth twists, it’s supposed to be a smile, but his face won’t move like he wants it to, his muscles feel crumpled. His eyes sting.

“I’m scared of Asuka,” he mutters. “She’s always yelling at me.”

“But you like her.”

He breathes in. His lungs feel too small. He opens his eyes and looks up at Kaworu.

“I like you,” he says.

Kaworu smiles his strange, sad smile and touches Shinji’s cheek so gently, his fingers feathery light and ghostly. Like he might disappear at any moment.

“Sweet Shinji,” he says. “I like you too.”

Shinji feels his heart jerk, skipping a beat.

“I-“ he starts but he doesn’t get to finish, he forgets what he was even about to say, because then Kaworu leans in.

His lips are so soft. Shinji doesn’t even realize he’s kissing him until he is. He forgets to close his eyes at first, but then Kaworu’s hand slides into his hair and they fall closed all by themselves as he breathes out heavily, opening his mouth just a bit. He grabs Kaworu’s shirt with his free hand and holds on to him tightly. His mind is blank. For the first time in forever, his head is quiet. He is kissing Kaworu and Kaworu is kissing him back and he wants to stay like this forever, and for a while it feels like they could. He can feel Kaworu smiling against his lips. Then a loud, high pitched yell sounds from the pool and Shinji jerks back, spins around to face the door.

It’s still closed. His heart is pounding, he’s not even sure if it’s because of the kiss or the shock.

They can still hear the voice from the pool. It isn’t actually yelling, just someone speaking very loudly, their words bouncing between the tiled walls, magnified by the echoey space. Shinji’s shoulders relax a bit. He never thought he would be relieved to hear Asuka yelling.

He turns back to Kaworu, notices only then that his hand is still clutching his shirt and he pulls it back too quickly.

“Sorry,” he breathes, feeling blood rush to his cheeks, but Kaworu just smiles.

“Do you want to go back?”

No.

“Sure.”

Kaworu leans in quick and kisses him again. As if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if that is something he can just do now.

“Okay,” he says with a grin, “let’s go save Rei from Asuka.”

 

Rei is still in the water, but she has surfaced, resting with a hand on the edge. She is looking up at Asuka, who stops yelling and whips around when Kaworu pulls open the door and Shinji steps past him into the pool area. She’s in her swimsuit, but she didn’t come through the locker room. He wonders idly if she walked through the headquarters like that.

“Shinji!” she yells.

She raises her arm to point at him, a look of iron clad determination on her face.

“You need to race me!”

He steps back, bumping into Kaworu.

“What? No, I don’t want to. Rei can race you.”

Asuka puts her hands on her hips, raises her chin like an army commander.

“If I tell you to race me, you’ll race me – or are you afraid I’ll beat you?”

“Please, you’ve got no chance,” Kaworu says.

Shinji whips around to glare at him.

“What? Of course she does!” he protests. “I’m a terrible swimmer!”

Kaworu grabs the towel Shinji still has clutched around his shoulders and pushes him forwards.

“Go race her, then. Prove me wrong.”

Kaworu is grinning, and Shinji grins back without even thinking.

“Come on!” Asuka calls, already climbing on to one of the starter podiums.

Shinji hesitates, but then Kaworu pushes him forward again and he walks to the nearest podium and steps onto it, feeling the rough texture of the non-skid surface under his feet. His heart is racing.

“Ready!” Kaworu calls out, his voice echoing between the walls.

Shinji crouches on his podium, mimicking Asuka’s pose. She grins viciously at him.

“Set!”

Shinji’s muscles tense. He hasn’t got a chance against Asuka, and she knows it, but it doesn’t matter. Rei is watching them. Kaworu is watching them. Shinji can still feel the ghost of his warm hand on his back from when he pushed him forwards. He can remember the press of his lips, the warm feel of his breath on his face. He feels a smile pull at the corners of his mouth.

“Go!” Kaworu yells.

And Shinji and Asuka plunge into the water.


End file.
